Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics

“If I had one thing on my agenda,” says Jeff, “it would be to make people feel better about the fact that everyone’s got their own neurotic stuff. Also, I don’t require anyone to join my cult, although I do encourage it.”
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Mindfulness is the ability to see what’s happening in your head at any given moment, so that you don’t get carried away by it.

There’s no buffer between the stimulus and your reflexive reaction.

The water represents your nonstop stream of consciousness, which consists mostly of “me, me, me” thoughts. Mindfulness is the area behind the waterfall, which allows you to step out of the cascade and view your urges, impulses, and desires without getting caught up in it all.

Respond, not react: this is a game changer

meditation empowers you to tap into what lies beneath or beyond the ego

We spend so much time working on our stock portfolios, our cars, and our interior design, but almost no time working on the one filter through which we experience it all, our minds.

These are vitally important, of course, but what the science is showing us is that happiness is not just something that happens to you; it is a skill.

meditation could help stave off or alleviate what Churchill called “the black dog,” by helping me achieve some distance from my sometimes bleak and repetitive patterns of thought, establishing the habit became a non-issue.

The default mental condition for too many human beings is dissatisfaction